


Pobody's Nerfect

by throwashadow



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Angst, Eating Disorders, Gen, Homophobic Language, Implied self-injury, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throwashadow/pseuds/throwashadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They debuted at number one. It had been exactly 24 hours since his last meal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before the series, on the cusp of Dethklok's huge success. Magnus would be here but I left him out, oops.

Their debut album hit number one, and everyone was so thrilled it was like Christmas morning. Even Ofdensen was grinning. The conference room at the record company, usually home to serious discussion, commands and scoldings, felt light. It was like a party. The label had even provided a few bottles of champagne for this morning meeting. A toast. Pickles demanded a high-five from Ofdensen.

William sat back in his chair, holding the champagne flute. It was delicate and fancy; he'd never had a reason to drink this sort of shit before. He sipped and his stomach turned; he felt it gurgle and cramp slightly, so he set down the glass. 

"You've done very well, boys."

It had been exactly 24 hours since his last meal. He'd been counting. The headache had been there for eight hours, not counting the ones he was asleep, but the swallow of champagne dulled it slightly. 

"Lyrical genius, the reviews are saying."

Everyone had done pretty fucking well, and Willy knew it. He was happy, he was proud. And he was relieved that they weren't going to have to record for a while, because he'd had enough. The pressure had been immense. He learned that he wasn't nearly as good as he thought he was -- not compared to these guys.

"Yes, I think life's about to become very, ah, different for you boys."

He downed the rest of his champagne. His headache disappeared like a vice being unscrewed, and he felt more lightheaded. But as he looked around, he couldn't be happy. He could barely focus.

Ofdensen was still discussing plans for the near future. To his right, Nathan was swaying a bit in his chair, fidgiting with his glass. His shoulders were impressive and his hair was perfect. Murderface thought he was really fucking brutal, thought his lyrics were some of the most beautiful shit he'd ever heard. But he was jealous of Nathan's musculature, and whenever they interacted all he could think about was how hard Nathan had to have worked to look like that, and how he wasn't working hard enough when he hit the gym every morning.

Pickles smirked, leaned back casually in his chair. He had great arms, too. He was small all over. William always felt like his personality was too fucking pathetic and tiny to fill out his body; thick and tall, awkward, gangly limbs and a big fat mass of stomach. He wasn't tough or strong, just a fucking little gay sissy nymph stuck into a suit three sizes too big. And when he looked at Pickles, he seemed bursting with zazz and life and shit. He was compact strength. William felt like a mutant.

And by Willy's right, Skwisgaar. The worst. The slim, strong body. Nimble fingers. The most talented of them all, even though Pickles had been playing longer. Everyone loved him. Didn't talk too much, but only said useful things. Got in the recording booth and did his take perfectly every time. Did it looking confident. Did it in all white, fresh clothing that skimmed his figure.

These were William's fucking friends or something. He knew them. They all got along. Apparently they made music together that was good enough to top the charts, even though it was a niche genre. But the past few months, seeing them every day, watching them close-up, ground into William's brain and amplified a voice that he'd been hearing his whole life.

You aren't good enough. But maybe if you weren't so fat and ugly, you'd be better.

And he'd been working on that, working hard on that the whole time they'd been recording. It was real, true hard work, harder than any work he'd done in his life, and he was proud that he'd stuck to it.

It meant waking up at 5 AM, hoisting himself out of bed and squint-eyed into the label's complementary gym. An hour working out, a quick shower and he'd rush to the day's session. Do his takes. Stare at Skwisgaar's legs, Pickles' arms, Nathan's imposing strength. On lunch break, it meant eating something small. Ignoring any headache or muscle soreness. Meticulously counting what he did eat.

Whenever the label called in food for them, he got excited and he couldn't explain why. He wanted more food, was the thing - even though his brain was shouting that he shouldn't if he wanted to be good and be liked and wanted, he couldn't stop wanting to eat. So he'd have whatever was being served, eat it quick and greedily so that he knew he was getting stares and sometimes comments. And the whole time his brain would scream no.

And when he was done, he would hardly be able to focus the rest of the session. Too much space in his brain was going to calculating exactly how bad he'd fucked up.

For those months, he'd done that, and wondered why he still looked life, felt life, was shit. He tried not to eat much on days they didn't record, to account for fuck-ups. It never really worked out because he would always get too hungry to bear.

But he'd actually done it for today. He felt sharp, impressive. He could do this for a week! Didn't even take effort, because it was all about NOT eating rather than actively doing something. If he got hungry, since he didn't have to work, he could just sleep. 

Everyone rose to their feet around him. He looked up, confused.

"C'mon, Moidahface. Meetings over."

"Right, right." William stood up and felt a head rush. 

"I'm pumped to get some real food," Nathan said.

He remembered: the label was going to take them out to lunch to celebrate their chart-topping debut album.

Fan-fucking-tastic. 

Now way he could get out of it. 

(Thank god, said some part of him.)

 

But he was cursing god, cursing the existence of food, cursing himself an hour later. He had to eat, he realized as they entered the restaurant. He was going to pass out if he didn't. That would be gay. And his headache was coming back, and this place was so fucking fancy, he didn't know if he'd ever get to try it again -- 

But those all sounded like excuses to him now, in the limo, compliments, again, of the label. They were on their way back home and everyone was still beaming like it was Christmas. More champagne. He'd declined it with a flick of his wrist, not wanting to say anything. It was like he was cast in a fog that no one else could see. He hoped, at least, that no one could see him, because he felt vulnerable. Didn't want to talk, didn't want to be seen. Wanted to go home and hide in his room just lock the door and not be part of the world.

The limo dropped them at their respective places -- he heard a snatch of Ofdensen saying something about moving out, into a central location, as he rose out of the car. 

He didn't want to think about living with anyone else. He wanted to be alone.

Safely in his apartment, he locked the door to his room and found his notebook. He struggled to remember the names of everything he'd eaten as he wrote them down. When he referenced his nutrition facts handbook, he couldn't find half of the list.

So he threw his notebook across the room, sat on the floor, and cried. Big, body-wracking, ugly sobs. His chest began to hurt. And he felt like he was going to explode from all of his thoughts. Not good enough, now you can't eat for a week.

It hurt him more to think about how he was going to fail at that, too.

He fell asleep on the floor an hour later, knife still in his hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer than I thought, unbeta'd, fuck it all. Here's Willy.

When William awoke, his mouth felt intensely dry, and his head hurt already. He knew he was dehydrated, but the idea of getting off the floor right now made him want to sleep for the rest of the day. So he rolled over, feeling the hard floor pressing against every inch of his skin as he did. His joints were sore, his skin felt all gross and dry and cold.

Awake in his body was the last place he wanted to be. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself back to sleep. But inevitably, he had to wake up again, and this time he was too thirsty to bear. Laying there and wishing for death wasn't working.

He went to the bathroom and cupped his hands under the faucet, gulping greedily from the pool that formed, again and again, until he was satisfied. Then he splashed water on his face, and looked up hesitantly at his reflection.

Same as always. He wished he hadn't. His eyes were puffy, he assumed from sleep, the skin under them shiny and pasty. Baring his teeth, he watched his cheeks distort around their bones, and noted his tooth gap. Everything in order. Everything as bad as usual.

He realized, as he was looking, that he hadn't yet eaten.

It set him off again. Sure, he'd avoided it so far. But it was just a matter of fucking time until he fucked up and ate again, wasn't it? He sat on the floor. It was dusty in the bathroom, dirtier than he let himself think about, but it was his surrender. The tile was cool, and he could pretend it was a morgue. Pretend he was a corpse. Dead people didn't need to eat or exercise. They didn't worry about anything. Even though he was no longer sleepy, laying there on the floor was all that William wanted to do.

He gave a passing thought to the time. He wasn't hungry, he'd decided. He hardly remembered the difference between being hungry and not. But he wanted to eat, and that idea was both gluing him to the floor and wedging him up.

Finally, mechanically, out of spite for his fragmented morning, he rose up and walked to the kitchen area. It wouldn't really help him, he knew. But it was something to do.

He prepared a small bowl of cereal and ate it standing at the counter. As he did, thoughts kept creeping back to him, telling him how disgusting it was that he was eating. He heard them loud and clear but kept on as if to drown them out. When he was finished, he left the bowl where it was and returned to his room, mind still racing.

He was going crazy. He couldn't keep his mind on one thing, but at the same time, he couldn't stop thinking about his reflection in the mirror, minutes earlier. The image was slipping, but the feeling that went along with it was overpowering: shame.

Hoping that it would help ground him, he went back into the bathroom to examine his reflection again. What the hell was wrong with him? He was really going fucking crazy, wasn't he? This wasn't okay for someone about to be famous and important. That thought made him feel worse.

It was a free day, and Charles had told them yesterday that things were going to start changing soon. Were they, then? Because he needed something to change.

But what Charles meant was that they were gonna get money. That was good, he guessed. He wouldn't have to struggle to pinch pennies while trying to organize food that didn't make him feel like shit. But he'd have to eat around other people, because..."central location" or whatever.

Dethklok been on small tours before, travelling together for a week or so, living in impossibly close quarters. Each time, Murderface had started the tour with every intention of being his normal self, not eating much, staying quiet. And each time he'd lashed out, under the stress had struggled to appear normal to his bandmates and overcompensated, turning mean and loud.

He was gonna get rich but his life wasn't gonna get any better, because he was gonna be around those jackoffs who didn't care about him. All the time. They would be his home.

Things were gonna change, but that didn't mean shit for his ugly face or his ugly body. That was up to him to change. He needed that to change right now.

He was still sneering at himself in the mirror, he realized. Focus shifted down his body. There was an awful lot of course hair covering his chest and stomach -- that, he didn't mind so much. He could almost hide himself in it. But truthfully, there was no ignoring the sunken chest and the fleshy trunk beneath it. It was him. He was attached to all of that. No matter how much he thought about taking his hunting knife and carving himself a new shape, he knew it was futile. It would hurt. It might kill him. He didn't mind dying, and he didn't really mind pain that much, but it wasn't what he needed.

At least he knew that. Because he'd been tempted too many times by the thought of just going at it, just forming his flesh into something better than he was. That was change, instant change, instant relief. Bandage it up and it was like magic.

Maybe he could just get surgery once he was rich. That was a LOT of money though, wasn't it? Not quick enough. His mind was swimming now, he was more than ready to stop being in this body.

He was beginning to panic. It was hard to breathe for some reason, and that made him even more frustrated, even a little scared. He saw his knife on the floor outside of the bathroom, and that gave him a little relief. When he picked it up, even better.

And then he held it to his stomach, just poked the very tip of the blade into the skin. That was full relief - that pain was a punishment far preferable to the hours of starving he'd been fond of lately.

He withdrew the blade, and there was no mark left despite the sharp pinprick of pain. Disappointing. To have nothing to show for it was so disastisfying, as if he hadn't even done anything. But to really cut deep into his flesh -- he knew it was dumb. He had scars from similar things, but the stomach was so much more sensitive than the limbs, he didn't think it was possible to really cut himself to satisfaction there. He needed just enough pain, shy of torture, and something to show for it.

There was an idea.

A few blocks from his apartment was a rather seedy line of tattoo shops, places with names like Iron Lotus and Inkwork and (his favorite) Prick. The windows were tinted, but he knew well enough what they were like inside: walls of kinda crappy art, girls with holes in their faces working the counter, and everyone once in a while, a guy with either a ponytail or a shaved head would come from the back and say someone's name.

He'd been -- peeked in out of curiosity, and ducked out quickly for fear of looking like a fag.

But it wasn't like some tattoo on his stomach would make him look like a fag. Better than a bunch of dumb scars. He decided right then, if he was gonna have to hurt, and if he was gonna be rich and important soon, he should do what the rich did and buy something that made him feel better. A tattoo was the thing.

Of what, he didn't know. A picture of a girl, now that wasn't gay, but it was just fucking dumb. Who wanted an ugly slut on their body permanently? That was the beauty in real girls - you could tell them off. But other than that, most tattoos were pretty gay, squiggly designs or fucking flowers. Some people got Bible verses, but it had been a while since he'd been to church, or believed in God for that matter. But the idea wasn't too awful. Bible verses were just words that you thought were important.

He'd get words. Some saying. He'd figure it out there, he decided as he quickly dressed and started out.

On his walk there, he kept thinking about that whole God thing. It wasn't something he particularly liked to think about, but it was something that he spent a lot of time with when he was a kid, going to church and Sunday School and praying at night to appease his Grandma. There were a lot of words to do with it all, but none of them were really good enough to put on his body. He didn't like God, really. Because as Grandma always said, God was perfect. God didn't make mistakes, and that meant that his ugly face, his ugly body, his dead parents, his half-dead Grandpa, and basically everything bad about his life...

It meant that was supposed to happen.

He didn't think that was true, and that's why he hated this fucking "perfect" God. God wasn't real, and he couldn't be perfect. Nobody was perfect.

Just as he arrived at the shop, he realized that that was what he wanted his tattoo to say.

He asked at the counter, and the girl with a hoop through her nose said that they could take him now. It was a Sunday afternoon, slow business for them. It would be $50, but he was about to be rich, so who cared. He was glad. He had something to focus on - this new thing happening, this change.

It hurt a lot, mostly because it took so long. But that was exactly what he needed. When the ponytail was finished and had wiped away the last of the excess ink, he backed off and returned with a mirror. He handed it to William.

"Well? Everything you wanted?"

It read: Pobody's Nerfect.

The goddamn ponytail had fucked it up.

"It's fucking perfect. It's nerfect."

It got the point across, anyway.


End file.
